


All I Need Tonight

by lizook12



Category: Arrow (TV 2012)
Genre: F/M, Future Fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-10
Updated: 2013-10-10
Packaged: 2017-12-29 00:42:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,261
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/998825
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lizook12/pseuds/lizook12
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He’s unbelievably thankful to have her by his side.</p>
            </blockquote>





	All I Need Tonight

**Author's Note:**

> So I'm not entirely sure how this happened. I went from saying "I'm not ready to write them yet" one night to having a list of possible ideas and the first scene of this written the next day. Hope you all enjoy it! Title taken from Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers' _Here Comes My Girl._
> 
> Much love to Grace for basically causing all of this.

It starts entirely innocently actually.

It’s one of the nights where she’s alone in the lair, Digg having declared it one of his personal nights while Oliver’s off doing very important hero-y things. Things that don’t need her front and center on the comms.

No, instead she’s reading through page after page of board meeting minutes, inventories, and what appears to be some sort of hidden investment buried deep in Cantro United’s files.

It’s incredibly tedious work, but it’s important, vital to what they do, and she’s actually quite good at it.

Except, well, her eyes are starting to cross.

Pushing away from her desk, she stands, does a couple laps around the room and leans back against the wall for a few minutes. The club music pounds overhead and she grins, realizing that, for a change, she can blast Vienna Teng as loudly as she wants.

She does so, turning the volume up as high as she dares before settling back in her chair.

The dueling music revitalizes her and she’s about to dive back into the minutiae when a reminder pops up on her phone: buy gift for Carly’s shower.

It triggers a stark realization and suddenly she needs to know.

How could she have been working by his side for over two years and not have a clue?

It’s unsettling and more than a little sad.

Minimizing the work window, she does a few quick checks, old interviews, profiles on the family. They’re surprisingly vague and, if she didn’t know how useless Oliver is with technology, she’d swear he somehow had articles rewritten or removed altogether.

All that aside, it takes her less than ten minutes.

With a little gasp, she tugs her lip between her teeth, lets her brain run through variables and options for a moment.

Three weeks.

Three weeks to slip a couple questions into casual conversation, gather the supplies, and somehow—she really hoped she could pull this off—come up with just the right gift for Oliver Queen’s birthday.

\--

“He talked easily enough, but...”

She swivels her chair, lifts an eyebrow as Oliver emerges from the shadows, his hair damp, a smudge of make-up still present in the crease of his eye. The hesitation in his tone is unusual even in light of the fact that he’s been more careful about missions lately, more content to actually balance the two halves of his life.

(The number of times she’s found him in her chair, suit jacket tossed over the nearest monitor as he reads a book instead of poring over information she’s printed out increasingly surprises and delights her.)

“But? Pengraft doesn’t seem particularly clever; the man funneled company funds to a holding company that’s literally his name backwards.” She rolls her shoulders, leans forward, her arms resting on her thighs.

“Agreed.” Hopping up on the table across from her, he leans back on his hands, tries not to focus on the tired but excited look written across her face.

“So that would imply that he wouldn’t be very deceptive when held at arrow point. I mean, some people might find that sort of thing exciting. Surely the girls that went to my high school wouldn’t be too adverse to it what with the pants and the sexy voice and—”

A startled cry escapes from her as heat lightly blossoms on her cheeks and she presses her lips together. He’s more than used to these little rambles of hers by now, but there’s still something undeniably endearing about them. About how earnest she is.

Even more than Digg sometimes, he’s unbelievably thankful to have her by his side.

“I’ll remember that the next time I’m a contestant on _The Dating Game_.”

She rolls her eyes at that, waves goodnight to Digg who’s shaking with silent but knowing laughter as he walks out. “Your complete lack of personal life aside...”

“Hey!”

“You want to argue?”

He shrugs, knowing she’s right, but probably not entirely for the reason she suspects. He lets it go, circles back to where this all started. “Anyhow, I don’t think Pengraft was lying. As you rightly pointed out, he’s not very shrewd, but he did seem relieved. Like there was something I could have asked him about, but didn’t.”

“You think I missed something?”

“I think _we_ missed something.”

“I’ll start running the encryption diagnostics right now, but first...” She glances at her screen and pulls her giant handbag from underneath her desk. “Since it’s well past midnight, happy birthday.”

She grins, wresting a very squashed looking cake from the bag.

“How did...” The question dies before he can even get it out. Of course, she’d figure out when it was. The real question is how long has she known. Suddenly the out of nowhere conversation with him and Digg about whether cheesecake or devil’s food was better comes back and he feels dizzy.

Surprised and happy and touched all at once.

The deceptive, bright IT girl pulled one over on him.

“...then I just had to find a recipe and test it. Sorry, it’s a bit of a mess, but this was the best result of multiple attemp—”

“Felicity, could you just hand me one of those forks?”

“Right.” She stands, quickly passing him one, hovering near the table as he takes a bite.

“It’s... ” He swallows and bites back a cough as the rum hits him full force. It’s a damn good cake. So simple on the outside and yet full of punch. “Well, looks certainly can be deceiving.” He inhales another forkful, tips his head toward her and suddenly it’s all too much.

That she just accepts him as is, that she’ll stand up to him without blinking one minute and the next be completely flustered when her mouth gets a bit ahead of her incredibly smart brain...

He closes the slight distance between them and kisses her, the fork clattering to the plate as she stiffens, then, _ohhellyes_ , gives in.

Her fingers twine in the hair at the nape of his neck, pulling him as close as possible with the plate still caught between them. She sighs, leans further into it as his tongue strokes over hers, all heat and need and adoration.

Gasping, she forces herself to break away, her hand shaking against the table as she pulls in slow, measured breaths. She’s not sure what to say, but immediately setting the record straight, giving them a way to move past whatever lunacy has just taken him over, seems to be the best course of action.

She’s about to open her mouth to tell him as much, to suggest they chalk it up to being caught in the moment, when she feels his thumb stroking over the inside of her wrist, sees the warmth in his eyes.

There’s no mask there, literal or metaphorical, and it stuns her. Rocking up on her toes, she kisses him quickly, enjoying the stunned yet somehow smug expression on his face. After a minute, the corner of his mouth kicks up and he wraps his arm around her waist, lifting her onto the table next to him.

Wordlessly, he sets the plate of even further smushed cake on his lap and hands her his fork.

“I guess it’s true what they say.”

“Hmm?” He follows the fork to her mouth, hand flexing on the table as her lips close around the metal.

“Age does make you wiser.”

He lets out a sharp laugh, steals a bite from her fork, and leans against her. “It was bound to happen sometime.”


End file.
